Victim of Man Arrested in Sjodin Disappearance Speaks

Dec. 3, 2003 -- When Shirley Iverson heard about the abduction of Dru Sjodin, she immediately thought of Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., the man who had raped her 30 years earlier.

"It occurred to me, and within a day of hearing about it on television … and looking on the Internet, I called the numbers that were listed to tell them to make sure to check what Alfonso Rodriguez had been doing that evening," Iverson said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.

Rodriguez, 50, of Crookston, Minn., appeared in the Polk County courthouse this morning and agreed to be sent to Grand Forks, N.D., to face a kidnapping charge Sjodin's case.

His recent arrest in the disappearance of 22-year-old Sjodin has renewed the fears of Crookston residents who still remember when the three-time sexual predator first changed their sleepy little town forever.

Rodriguez's first known attack took place on the night of Oct. 19, 1974, when Rodriguez was just 21 years old.

Rodriguez spotted the then-18-year-old Iverson leaving a Crookston bar before he forced her to drive to remote location. He then sexually assaulted her.

Exactly a month after the Iverson assault, Rodriguez struck again. He attacked a woman he spotted leaving a local movie theater. He forced her to have intercourse with him at knifepoint.

Rodriguez's crimes were shocking to residents of Crookston, a town of only a few thousand people. They had considered Crookston as virtually crime-free until Rodriguez came along.

When Rodriquez was arrested and sentenced in April 1975 to 15 years in a security hospital, Crookston residents thought everything would return to normal. It did, until Rodriquez was released a few years later, in 1979.

It took just seven months for Rodriguez to strike again. He threatened to kill a woman walking down Elm Street when she refused to enter his car. When she continued to resist he pulled a knife and stabbed her through the left arm and abdomen.

The young woman didn't forget her attacker's face. In fact, she sketched it for police. Rodriguez was convicted again and served 23 years in prison. When he was released in May, Crookston residents began to worry that a new generation of local women would be at risk.

Iverson, who has since moved to Portland, Ore., said she began to worry about the safety of the women in and around Crookston immediately after she got the call from police, letting her know that Rodriguez was a free man again.

"It was very upsetting. Because when he was released in May, even with the best of safety planning and consideration, I guess it was really about not if, but when — when he would re-offend," Iverson said.

Sjodin, a student at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, has been missing since Nov. 22. Sjodin, who is from Pequot Lakes, Minn., was last seen in the parking lot of a Grand Forks mall, where she worked at a Victoria's Secret store.

Police have said they have probable cause to believe Rodriguez, who now faces a kidnapping charge in the Sjodin disappearance, was in the mall parking lot that evening.

Anyone with information about Sjodin's whereabouts has been asked to call the Grand Forks Police Department tip line at (701) 780-8213. The reward for information leading to hers safe return is $140,000. Her family and friends have set up a Web site, http://finddru.com.